The Guardian reports:

Scotland Yard has been asked to inspect thousands of files that could reveal whether its officers unlawfully procured mobile phone-tracking data for News of the World reporters.

There were half a million requests by public authorities for communications data in the UK last year – of which almost 144,000 were demands for “traffic” data, which includes location.

A Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) member has asked the force to investigate allegations that News of the World reporters were able to purchase this data from police for £300 per request.

The claims were made by Sean Hoare, the News of the World whistleblower, days before he was found dead at his home on Monday. His disclosure about the purchase of illicit location data was first made to the New York Times, which said the practice was confirmed by a second source at the tabloid. Police have said Hoare’s death was not suspicious.

Mobile phone location data, which is highly regulated, would give tabloid reporters access to a method of almost total surveillance, arguably even more intrusive than hacking into phone messages.

The Guardian reports:

One of the members of the LulzSec hacking group has claimed on Twitter that the group has got 4GB of emails taken from the Sun and the “royal family” which may be released as soon as lunchtime on Thursday.

The claim follows a hacking attack against News International on Tuesday night during which members of LulzSec apparently broke into computer systems there and redirected readers of the Sun’s website to a faked page claiming News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch had been found dead.

Significantly, the group also seems to have broken into the email database at News International.

Some accounts belonging to Anonymous also began tweeting email addresses and passwords for staff at News International, including what seemed to be an email account and password for Rebekah Brooks under her previous married name of Wade while at the Sun.

Seumas Milne writes:

The Tory operation to bury the phone-hacking scandal in spin and official inquiries is now in full flow. On his way back from Africa, David Cameron declared it was essential to get the whole business into perspective, echoing Rupert Murdoch’s insistence that his competitors had got up “this hysteria”. Today, the prime minister chided Ed Miliband for “chasing conspiracy theories” and claimed it was really Gordon Brown who had been in the pocket of the global media billionaire.

Meanwhile, News International pundits and others with their own reasons to stem the flood of revelations have been loudly insisting that the political clout of Murdoch’s corporate colossus has been exaggerated. The hyper-regulated BBC is the real media monopoly, they say, and in any case the current fixation with phone hacking has meant no one is discussing bankers’ bonuses and the threat of another financial meltdown. This is a “frenzy that has grown out of control”, the Daily Mail complained.

But the real frenzy isn’t the exposure of the scandal – it’s the scale of corruption, collusion and cover-up between News International, politicians and police that the scandal has revealed. As the cast of hacking victims, blaggers and blackmailers has lengthened, and the details of the incestuous payments and job-swapping between News International, government and Scotland Yard become more complex, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture that is now emerging.

If it were not for the uncovering of this cesspit, the Cameron government would be preparing to nod through the outright takeover of BSkyB by News International, taking its dominance of Britain’s media and political world into Silvio Berlusconi territory. But what has been exposed now goes well beyond the hacking of murder victims and dead soldiers’ families – or even the media itself. The scandal has lifted the lid on how power is really exercised in 21st-century Britain – in which the unreformed City and its bankers play a central part.

Murdoch’s overweening political influence has long been recognised, from well before Tony Blair flew to Australia in 1995 to pay public homage at his corporate court. What has been less well understood is how close-up and personal the pressure exerted by his organisation has been throughout public life. The fear that those who crossed him would be given the full tabloid treatment over their personal misdemeanours, real or imagined, has proved to be a powerful Mafia-like racket.

Roy Greenslade, who was a senior executive at two News International titles, The Sun and the Sunday Times, says that Rupert Murdoch’s testimony in Britain’s House of Commons yesterday, where he essentially plead ignorance about wrongdoing inside News of the World, clashes with Greenslade’s own experience of the way Murdoch oversees the operations of his companies.

At both newspapers, I was close enough to the editors – sometimes standing in as editor myself – to witness how Rupert Murdoch operated. Despite living in the United States, he ensured that he knew everything that happened at his British papers.

In phone calls marked by a mixture of abrupt questions and periods of intimidating silence, he elicited information from his editors and managers about intimate details of both editorial and commercial affairs.

It was impossible to conceive that anyone would lie to Murdoch either by commission or omission. He was street smart. He saw through bluster and he was not above testing the veracity of what he was told by one executive by running it past another.

His cross-referencing of his internal company sources was journalistic. He wanted to hear the minutiae; who had said what to whom? He relished the gossip.

In those days he was already running a giant company, with a Hollywood film studio, a burgeoning US TV network and media outlets across the world. It is fair to say that, by the turn of the millennium, it had grown bigger still, most noticeably due to News Corp’s global pay-TV interests.

It is also undeniable, as his faltering performance yesterday illustrated, that as Murdoch’s company expanded so he grew older. So he may well have been altogether less hands-on in the past decade than he was during the time I worked for him.

Then again, it beggars belief that he didn’t smell a rat in 2006 when the News of the World‘s royal editor Clive Goodman was arrested along with a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who was being paid more than £100,000 a year under a contract with the paper.

That was the moment I would have expected him to ask searching questions of the editor and the chief executive of his News International division in Wapping. Did he really accept the public stance about voicemail interception being confined to a single rogue reporter?

The Guardian reports:

Rupert Murdoch’s News International has been found by a parliamentary committee to have “deliberately” tried to block a Scotland Yard criminal investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World, the Guardian has learned.

The report by MPs from the all-party home affairs committee will be released on Wednesday and its publication has been moved forward in time for today’s statement by prime minister David Cameron on the scandal.

The report’s central finding comes a day after Rupert and James Murdoch testified before the culture, media and sport committee.

The home affairs committee report marks an official damning judgment on News International’s actions.

It finds the company deliberately tried to “thwart” the 2005-6 Metropolitan police investigation into phone hacking carried out by the News of the World.

News Corp condemns hacking. That seems to be the corporate PR directive that has landed on the desk of every one of Rupert Murdoch’s minions in their ongoing effort to save him and themselves.

The latest example of this strategy of damage control comes from Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens under the headline: “News of the World vs. WikiLeaks.”

How does this year’s phone hacking scandal at the now-defunct British tabloid News of the World—owned, I hardly need add, by News Corp., the Journal‘s parent company—compare with last year’s contretemps over the release of classified information by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks and his partners at the New York Times, the Guardian and other newspapers?

At bottom, they’re largely the same story.

In both cases, secret information, initially obtained by illegal means, was disseminated publicly by news organizations that believed the value of the information superseded the letter of the law, as well as the personal interests of those whom it would most directly affect. In both cases, fundamental questions about the lengths to which a news organization should go in pursuit of a scoop have been raised. In both cases, a dreadful human toll has been exacted: The British parents of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, led to the false hope that their child might be alive because some of her voice mails were deleted after her abduction; Afghan citizens, fearful of Taliban reprisals after being exposed by WikiLeaks as U.S. informants.

Both, in short, are despicable instances of journalistic malpractice, for which some kind of price ought to be paid. So why is one a scandal, replete with arrests, resignations and parliamentary inquests, while the other is merely a controversy, with Mr. Assange’s name mooted in some quarters for a Nobel Peace Prize?

Scandal: “A publicized incident that brings about disgrace or offends the moral sensibilities of society.”

We all know why Bret Stephen’s News Corp paymasters have been hauled in front of a parliamentary committee today to answer questions on the News of the World phone hacking scandal. But the Wikileaks scandal?

The treatment of Bradley Manning is certainly a scandal — but not one that has garnered a great deal of attention in the mainstream media. But Wikileaks efforts to promote transparency in government are neither a scandal, nor indeed do they involve hacking. There is no evidence that either Wikileaks or newspapers publishing documents provided by Wikileaks, broke the law.

The real difference between the Wikileaks story and the exposure of business practices employed by News Corp is the difference between public interest and self interest. For Rupert Murdoch’s empire, as ideological driven as some of its components might seem to be, is ultimately an enterprise with a very simple agenda.

The populism that unites News of the World and Fox News is one in which news entertainers exploit the commercial value of popular sentiment in whatever way can grab the largest market share. Sure, they have a broadly conservative agenda, but their philosophy and business practices boil down to this: they’re only in it for the money.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

With fallout from the News of the World phone hacking scandal far from contained, corporate ratings firm Standard & Poor’s on Monday said that it was putting Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. on its “CreditWatch” list, which could result in a possible credit downgrade.

The move would be costly for a company that has already seen $8 billion in market value evaporate during the two weeks since the scandal first blew up.

News Corp. shares tumbled further Monday, closing at $14.97 a share. That is a 17% decline since July 5 when the scandal began to mushroom.

Losing its BBB+ credit rating would result in higher borrowing costs for News Corp.

Standard & Poor’s attributed its action Monday to “the increased business and reputation risks associated with broadening legal inquiries” and investigations, including one by the FBI, into possible criminal behavior by News Corp. journalists and executives.

“In our opinion this and other recent developments materially increase the reputational, management, litigation, and other risks currently faced by News Corp. and its subsidiaries,” Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Michael Altberg said in his company’s release.

The ratings firm also pointed to a “weakening of the company’s executive bench strength.”

TechCrunch reports:

The web site of The Sun newspaper, part of News International which has been embroiled in the phone hacking scandal in the UK, has been hacked, apparently by hacker group Lulzsec, which tweeted “@LulzSec: We have owned Sun/News of the World – that story is simply phase 1 – expect the lulz to flow”.

The hack is a redirect to “http://www.new-times.co.uk/sun/” and contains a (clearly false) story about Rupert Murdoch being found dead. Ironically the domain ‘new-times.co.uk’ is registered to one News International Newspapers Limited.

The ‘story’ begins:

Rupert Murdoch, the controversial media mogul, has reportedly been found dead in his garden, police announce. Murdoch, aged 80, has said to have ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last night, passing out in the early hours of the morning.”

No doubt this is in reference to the tragic news tonight that a pivotal informer in the phone hacking scandal, Sean Hoare, was tonight found dead in his apartment, though Police are reporting the circumstances as ‘not suspicious’.

The Guardian reports:

Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned.

Hoare, who worked on the Sun and the News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems, is said to have been found dead at his Watford home.

Hertfordshire police would not confirm his identity, but the force said in a statement: “At 10.40am today [Monday 18 July] police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on the street. Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.

“The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing.”

It looks like the grounds for lack of suspicion might be buried close to the end of this article. When speaking to a Guardian journalist last week, Hoare said “he had been injured the previous weekend while taking down a marquee erected for a children’s party. He said he had broken his nose and badly injured his foot when a relative accidentally struck him with a heavy pole from the marquee.”

Nick Davies writes:

At a time when the reputation of News of the World journalists is at rock bottom, it needs to be said that the paper’s former showbusiness correspondent Sean Hoare, who died on Monday, was a lovely man.

In the saga of the phone-hacking scandal, he distinguished himself by being the first former NoW journalist to come out on the record, telling the New York Times last year that his former friend and editor, Andy Coulson, had actively encouraged him to hack into voicemail.

That took courage. But he had a particularly powerful motive for speaking. He knew how destructive the News of the World could be, not just for the targets of its exposés, but also for the ordinary journalists who worked there, who got caught up in its remorseless drive for headlines.

Explaining why he had spoken out, he told me: “I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation. In the newsroom, you have people being fired, breaking down in tears, hitting the bottle.”

He knew this very well, because he was himself a victim of the News of the World. As a showbusiness reporter, he had lived what he was happy to call a privileged life. But the reality had ruined his physical health: “I was paid to go out and take drugs with rock stars – get drunk with them, take pills with them, take cocaine with them. It was so competitive. You are going to go beyond the call of duty. You are going to do things that no sane man would do. You’re in a machine.”

Bloomberg reports:

News Corp. (NWSA)’s Rupert Murdoch is struggling to control the destiny of the company he began building six decades ago after a trusted deputy was arrested and Scotland Yard’s top official quit over ties to a suspect in the phone-hacking probe.

Independent directors of New York-based News Corp. have begun questioning the company’s response to the crisis and whether a leadership change is needed, said two people with direct knowledge of the situation who wouldn’t speak publicly. Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief who Murdoch backed until last week, was arrested yesterday in London.

“The shell of invulnerability that Rupert Murdoch had around him has been cracked,” said James Post, a professor at Boston University’s School of Management who has written about governance and business ethics. “His credibility and the company’s credibility are hemorrhaging.”

Murdoch and his 38-year-old son, James Murdoch, are spending most of their time with advisers preparing for tomorrow’s hearing before a U.K. parliamentary committee. They will face questions over their role in and responsibility for phone hacking that took place at their now-defunct News of the World tabloid. The company took out advertisements in national U.K. newspapers this weekend to apologize for the scandal.

News Corp. (NWS) fell 66 cents, or 4.2 percent, to $14.98 on the Nasdaq Stock Market at 11:18 a.m. New York time. Before today, it had lost 13 percent since July 4, when the Guardian reported that News of the World employees had intercepted the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a schoolgirl who was later found murdered. The tabloid is also alleged to have hacked into the phones of terror victims and dead soldiers, as well as politicians and celebrities.

The slump has shaved more than $6 billion off the combined value of the Class A shares and the Class B voting stock that gives the Murdochs control over the company.

David Carr writes:

“Bury your mistakes,” Rupert Murdoch is fond of saying. But some mistakes don’t stay buried, no matter how much money you throw at them.

Time and again in the United States and elsewhere, Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation has used blunt force spending to skate past judgment, agreeing to payments to settle legal cases and, undoubtedly more important, silence its critics. In the case of News America Marketing, its obscure but profitable in-store and newspaper insert marketing business, the News Corporation has paid out about $655 million to make embarrassing charges of corporate espionage and anticompetitive behavior go away.
[…]
In 2006 the state of Minnesota accused News America of engaging in unfair trade practices, and the company settled by agreeing to pay costs and not to falsely disparage its competitors.

In 2009, a federal case in New Jersey brought by a company called Floorgraphics went to trial, accusing News America of, wait for it, hacking its way into Floorgraphics’s password protected computer system.

The complaint summed up the ethos of News America nicely, saying it had “illegally accessed plaintiff’s computer system and obtained proprietary information” and “disseminated false, misleading and malicious information about the plaintiff.”

The complaint stated that the breach was traced to an I.P. address registered to News America and that after the break-in, Floorgraphics lost contracts from Safeway, Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly.

Much of the lawsuit was based on the testimony of Robert Emmel, a former News America executive who had become a whistle-blower. After a few days of testimony, the News Corporation had heard enough. It settled with Floorgraphics for $29.5 million and then, days later, bought it, even though it reportedly had sales of less than $1 million.

But the problems continued, and keeping a lid on News America turned out to be a busy and expensive exercise. At the beginning of this year, it paid out $125 million to Insignia Systems to settle allegations of anticompetitive behavior and violations of antitrust laws. And in the most costly payout, it spent half a billion dollars in 2010 on another settlement, just days before the case was scheduled to go to trial. The plaintiff, Valassis Communications, had already won a $300 million verdict in Michigan, but dropped the lawsuit in exchange for $500 million and an agreement to cooperate on certain ventures going forward.

The News Corporation is a very large, well-capitalized company, but that single payout to Valassis represented one-fifth of the company’s net income in 2010 and matched the earnings of the entire newspaper and information division that News America was a part of.

John Nichols writes:

Australian-born billionaire Rupert Murdoch has manipulated not just the news but the news landscape of the United States for decades. He has done so by pressuring the Federal Communications Commission and Congress to alter the laws of the land and regulatory standards in order to give his media conglomerate an unfair advantage in “competition” with more locally focused, more engaged and more responsible media.

It’s an old story: while Murdoch’s Fox News hosts prattle on and on about their enthusiasm for the free market, they work for a firm that seeks to game the system so Murdoch’s “properties” are best positioned to monopolize the discourse.

Now, with Murdoch’s News Corp. empire in crisis—collapsing bit by bit under the weight of a steady stream of allegations about illegal phone hacking and influence peddling in Britain—there is an odd disconnect occurring in much of the major media of the United States. While there is some acknowledgement that Murdoch has interests in the United States (including not just his Fox News channel but the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), the suggestion is that Murdoch was more manipulative, more influential, more controlling in Britain than here.

But that’s a fantasy. Just as Murdoch has had far too much control over politics and politicians in Britain during periods of conservative dominance—be it under an actual Tory such as former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and current Prime Minister David Cameron or under a faux Tory such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair—he has had far too much control in the States. And that control, while ideological to some extent, is focused mainly on improving the bottom line for his media properties by securing for them unfair legal and regulatory advantages.